Table 3.
Descriptive characteristics of participants with or without outstanding skills and between-group statistics for a. Special isolated skills (SIS) and b. Perceptual peaks (PP)
| Special isolated skills (SIS) | Statistics | p | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With | Without | |||
| a. | ||||
| Autistic individuals | ||||
| N (%) | 159 (62.6) | 95 (37.4) | Binomial test | <0.001** |
| Male (%) | 141 (63.2) | 82 (36.8) | χ2(1, N = 254) = 0.310 | 0.578 |
| Wechsler’s GIQ z-score (SD) | −0.67 (1.28) | −1.36 (1.13) | t(169) = −3.208 | 0.002* |
| RPM z-score (SD) | 0.68 (1.08) | 0.04 (1.07) | t(146) = −3.112 | 0.002* |
| Age in years (SD) | 13.36 (8.25) | 7.97 (6.28) | t(237.455) = −5.878 | <0.001** |
| Perceptual peaks (PP) | Statistics | p | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With | Without | |||
| b. | ||||
| Autistic individuals | ||||
| N (%) | 23 (57.5) | 17 (42.5) | Binomial test | 0.430 |
| Male (%) | 20 (87) | 13 (76.5) | Fischer Exact | 0.432 |
| Wechsler’s GIQ z-score (SD) | −0.73 (0.77) | 0.25 (0.94) | t(38) = 3.620 | 0.001* |
| RPM z-score (SD) | 0.85 (0.63) | 0.70 (1.04) | t(38) = −0.568 | 0.574 |
| Age in years (SD) | 20.00 (5.48) | 21.47 (6.30) | t(38) = 0.787 | 0.436 |
| TD controls | ||||
| N (%) | 5 (13.2) | 33 (86.8) | Binomial test | <0.001** |
| Male (%) | 5 (100) | 28 (84.8) | Fischer Exact | 1.000† |
| Wechsler’s GIQ z-score (SD) | 0.19 (1.23) | 0.53 (0.82) | t(36) = 0.815 | 0.421 |
| RPM z-score (SD) | 0.34 (0.70) | 0.43 (0.76) | t(36) = 0.258 | 0.798 |
| Age in years (SD) | 21.6 (3.36) | 20.03 (3.73) | t(36) = −0.886 | 0.381 |
†No female TD controls with a PP peak. Intelligence levels and ages are expressed as mean (SD)
TD typically developing, RPM Raven progressive matrices, GIQ global IQ from Wechsler’s Intelligence Scales, SD standard deviation
** p < 0.001; * p < 0.01